Introduction

Welcome to VolNinja. This guide explains how to use the app: getting it running, placing trades, automating them, and reviewing how they did.

What VolNinja is

VolNinja is an automation cockpit for 0DTE and short-dated options trading on Interactive Brokers. Instead of watching the screen and clicking through orders all day, you describe the trades you want as reusable templates, let rules manage and close them for you, and, once you're ready, hand whole playbooks to a strategy that watches the market and acts on its own.

Three things set it apart:

• Your broker. It trades through your own Interactive Brokers account, with live market data and real order execution.
• Your rules. Entries, exits, profit targets, and risk limits are all yours to define, either per position or across your whole book.
• Your machine. The trading engine (your data and your broker connection) runs on your own computer and never leaves it. The app you look at is served from the cloud and connects back over a private link, so you can open the interface from any browser while your trades stay at home. How VolNinja works covers the details.

Who it's for

VolNinja is built for active options traders who trade, or want to trade, short-dated options on Interactive Brokers: the SPX and XSP index options, or the SPY and QQQ ETFs. It's for people who think in terms of setups, profit targets, and risk limits, and would rather encode that approach once than execute it by hand every session.

This guide documents the product: what each screen does and how to get work done. It assumes you already know what a strike, a Greek, or a 0DTE strangle is, and doesn't teach options theory.

How this guide is organized

The sidebar groups articles by what you're trying to do:

• Getting Started — how VolNinja works, installing VolNinja Desktop (or installing with Docker on a server), connecting Interactive Brokers and the recommended IBKR setup, a tour of your first run, updating, and backups.
• Common Workflows — task-first walkthroughs that cross several screens: placing a trade, building a template, automating exits, running a strategy, checking risk, reviewing results, and paper vs live.
• Positions — the Dashboard where you watch and act on what you hold, starting with Positions overview.
• Market View — the live options chain, the intraday chart, and how VolNinja manages your market data.
• Automation Basics — the shared foundation behind every rule in the app: Rules & conditions, formulas and steps tables, the condition field reference, and execution algos.
• Templates and Strategies — the reusable building blocks of automation, from a single template to a full strategy.
• Risk Lab — judge a trade before you commit, then review your results after.
• Remote Access & Account — account and billing, pairing a device, reaching your app from anywhere, and managing your account.
• Settings and Troubleshooting — what you can configure, and fixes for common issues.

Where to start

If VolNinja isn't running yet, begin with How VolNinja works to understand the pieces, then Installing & starting VolNinja and Connecting IBKR. If it's already up and connected, jump to Your first run for a guided tour, or straight to Placing a trade.